rock climbing
it helps to have the right equipment
but here you are anyway, on the wall,
water below, or death;
sky above, or hereafter.
it helps to have the equipment
but you're already in-between.
where is there to go but on?
you've read about climbers--
wiry men, mostly, too young
to know, to believe in death;
too here to worry about the after.
one climber had a feature in
some magazine you saw, one
day in a doctor's office,
the blood sliding out of you,
the baby already dead but
waiting, as if some ghosts think
they still belong to you.
"fear-- it's a stupid word;
no point to it", he'd said,
"i am only thinking: where
next does my hand fit?
where next my foot?"
on the mountain, sky above,
water below, looking steadily
ahead there is only the
firmness of rock. it doesn't
worry about the sky, the endless
blue and whoosh of it, or the water,
the wet rolling change of it.
it doesn't even worry about you,
and where you fit, or whether
you have the right equipment.
your carabeners and ropes and chalk:
a temporary insult.
there is nowhere to go but on.
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